Avatar: A Barefoot Alien Society

Hey, Shale.

I noted in your other post that you wear glasses. How were you able to use the 3D glasses as well? Did you wear contacts?

I'm looking forward to the release of the Blu-Ray disc for this movie. I've found Blu-ray quality to be quite a bit better than non-digital cinema projectors and with our HTPC-based digital projection system, we have the best image quality here at home.

 

Below is a link to CNET's review of the 2010 CES (Consumer Electronics Show). When the disc is released you may be able to get a 3D Blu-Ray disc and player. Some systems are alleged not to need glasses although I can't imagine they won't make prescription 3D glasses. Do you already run 3D on your HTPC system?

http://ces.cnet.com

 

Those big plastic 3-D glasses actually fit on top of my regular glasses.

However, I have discovered a strange phenomenon with movies on the big screen when I forgot my glasses. I don't really need them - the image on screen is fairly sharp, even tho the EXIT sign next to it was blurred. Go figure?

 

Well, it is one large piece of CGI entertainment with a message - even though the message has been told in other tales before... think Pocahontas in space, barefoot, with blue skin and a tail, lots of trippy blacklight forest scenes and the settlers sporting large guns, powered body armour with even larger guns, futuristic attack helicopters and large heli bombers.

It's entertaining, alright. The 3D version is a must see, if one chooses to watch the movie (and the 3D goggles are no problems for people wearing glasses... they do indeed fit well over them, unless you have some 1970 BEM - bug-eyed monster - glasses...). It's neutrally positive in presenting the natives' barefootedness and the main character's development into a barefooter enjoying to commune with nature. It shows a beautiful concept of earthbound spirituality with the message to treat your Mother well (kind of filched from both native Americans as well as the basis of Wiccan Rede) and even presents the whole world as being a living and thinking sentient being (now, in which Final Fantasy The Spirit Within have I heard that before...? ).

But, still, it's merely a different take at Pocahontas and John Smith.

Wiggling toes, not having the Na'Vi Blues,

~*Ganesha*~

 

Not yet, as the technology is not mainstream and is therefore prohibitively expensive. Once it's widely available, we'll certainly be adopting it.

Thanks, Shale! Good to know for the next time we're in a major city. We might not be able to see Avatar in 3D, but I'd like to experience the technology some time.

Dances with wolves and Fern Gully are the movies I find closest in theme.

 

As we can all agree on the portrayal of barefooting in the movie being a positive one (it's not pointed out as being weird or dangerous), real life has struck with something James Cameron wouldn't have wanted (or so I hope, at least):

"(CBS) Here's one tagline the blockbuster film "Avatar" probably doesn't want: It's so good it might kill you.

A 42-year-old Taiwanese man with a history of high blood pressure apparently died from a stroke while watching the film, Agence France Presse reported.

The reportedly felt ill while watching the film earlier this month, then headed to the hospital. When he arrived at the emergency room, he was unconscious, a doctors told AFP.

The man died 11 days later.

"It's likely that the over-excitement from watching the movie triggered his symptoms," Dr. Peng Chin-chih told AFP."

source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/19/entertainment/main6114914.shtml

I can smell the morbid people lurking somewhere and making t-shirts reading "I watched Avatar... and I survived!"

Wiggling toes in disbelief at reality's sick humor,

Oel ngati kameie

~*Ganesha*~

 

Looks like his doctor didn't control his blood pressure well!

I like your Pocahontas analogy. In the story, did the settlers attack after they were married?

 

It was reported in my morning 'paper last week that some people are naming their children "Neytiri" after the leading character.
As far as i know, it's the first time anyone has named a kid after a cgi character, unless someone knows a kid called Gollum! (another barefoot cgi)

 

Or Shrek, for that matter... - however, I guess that's a matter of aesthetics, too. Neytiri is a person, that would even prompt a Na'Vi to say sevin nítxan nang! ("My, aren't you pretty!").

wiggling toes of a barefoot hobby linguist,

kiyevame ulte Eywa ngahu,

~*Ganesha*~

 

first off I have to make public self-criticism : yesterday a friend of mine induced me into dismissing my uptight attitude against mainstream and actually go and see the (3D) movie in a theatre. Maybe that *she* had some other arguments besides the gorgeous realD to lure me into the dark hall but that's another story . Let's say that I wanted to see the 3D effect, wanted to experience something new and ...it is damn great. When it started one of my first thoughts was: omg, i am going to find boring every other flick, after this. Yes, I can understand how avatar blues feels: the overall judgment is that 'they' manufactured a really mind blowing concoction that deserves appreciation by itself. Still I have my doubts about the intellectual honesty of choosing to draw the good guys as the epitome of awesomeness , taller and prouder than real when actually real-world victims never approach those alien standards (yet they're fucking human beings and have the right of being treated as such under every circumstance) and btw that's why someone less in touch with reality may feel tridimensionally frustrated. After all we're the small bastard dwarfs with guns, lol This movie is just plain a drug. It is expensive, it gives you hallucinations , it fucks with your mind in several different ways and we all wait to see if flashbacks, addiction and long term effects are to be expected .
Oh, since here theft is a common attitude, at the end of the high no one returned the useless glasses .

p.s.: imagine a movie like that with holophonic sound added.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA"]YouTube- Virtual Barber Shop (Audio...use headphones, close ur eyes)

 

It was a fun movie, but it bored me to tears in the end. Escapism is fine and all, but if you can see the ending coming from a mile away... blah. Secretly, I was kind of hoping that Colonel Quatrich and his merry band of bastards would win, and the Na'vi would fight a heroic guerrilla war in the sequel...

 

That couldn't have happened - after all, Ripl..., errm, I mean Grace was shot. You couldn't fight guerilla style without Mrs. Alien-Killer No. 1, or could you?



Let's be happy about the barefoot kitties winning - However, if there is a sequel... hold it. What do we have here on IMDB? "Untitled James Cameron Project" (2011) - OK, when there is a sequel it's most likely to be a cute home story of Jake's blue family. After all, in one draft of the script that randy blue bugger got Neytiri pregnant.

wiggling toes, waiting for more Na'Vi vocabulary (no words for toe, foot, barefoot as yet... sheesh, that Dr. Frommer has some work to do!),

~*Ganesha*~

 

You are absolutely right! A totally predictable ending from about 1 hour out. Perhaps less people have strokes this way? A caring Hollywood???? - what am I thinking??? Less money available for writing after all those special effects!